I love my trusty PlayStation 4 controllers, but they're many years old now, and technology has moved on with it. I'm trying out replacement Hall Effect joysticks to see if they make a difference to my light gaming needs, but it turned out to be a hell of a journey to get them in there.
Is it worth it? Watch the video! And if you're still interested in doing the same, here's the parts I used:
Hall Effect Joysticks on AliExpress. In the end these are just some generic ones. I get the feeling that these are the kinds of things where even the branded ones are just sourced from the same places. While mine work great, I can't vouch for the quality assurance on yours.
Once you've got them in, manually centre them as best as you can. The tricky part here is that you can't centre them when the controller is assembled, so I just connected the bare minimum; I connected the button membrane and battery to the controller. I then used the silicon button pad to press the Playstation button on the board to turn it on - the lights are not connected so you can't see if it's on, but it showed up on my computer's Bluetooth panel straight away. The website https://hardwaretester.com/gamepad allowed me to then see what I was doing.
It's near impossible get a perfect 0 from small manual adjustments, but that's where step 2 comes in. With the controller fully assembled, plug it in via USB and go to https://dualshock-tools.github.io/. This tool exposes the factory calibration tools, so you can calibrate them to perfect 0 in software! Now you're ready to rock.
If you're interested in the USB C mod, I highly recommend it! You can find it here. Again, AliExpress - these are the kinds of mods where someone likely released the files on Github, and Chinese sellers ripped off the designs. I bought them many years ago from someone who actually did develop it, but I don't remember where. As I can't find it, I assume they're not being sold anymore.
There are multiple revisions of the DS4 controllers, and the shape of the USB board is different in each. Check the numbers on the label of your controller before you buy.
I'm no pro gamer, and I've got two of these controllers, only one of which I upgraded. Putting them side by side, the deadzone decrease is definitely noticeable. In Cyberpunk 2077 I could set it to 5%, and the slightest touch on the joystick registers in game. Also I do notice that they're slightly smoother, but I only really notice when they're side by side. I did a blind test and I was able to successfully identify the modded one, but if you gave them to me 10 minutes apart, I wouldn't know from feel alone.
In the end though, the smoothness could just be from it being a brand new joystick vs the many years old one, which is a another factor to the conclusion in the video. In the end, I used a permanent marker to place a small dot so I know which one is which.